Dr. Loyd is a fantastic mentor who cares deeply about her students and their projects. As the last seminar of the Lemelson program, it's essential to stay on course--and she is determined to see you through the finish line.

My advice is to attend every seminar (don't miss it!), be open and honest about issues and problems that you've run into, and work with Dr. Loyd to address those obstacles and clear the way for you to finish up your project and thesis. She will push you, but you must be proactive and willing to put in the effort at the end of the day.

In addition to a wealth of advice on finishing the thesis and conference presentation, she will invite Lemelson alum to speak about their experiences. They are also a great source of advice for you, especially as all of them have had similar difficulties as you (trust me, bro). If you know how to ask for help, you will receive it.

Good luck!

The only thing I learned in Loyd's class is to avoid her in the future. Unhelpful, rude, (which falls into the realm of unprofessional), and unclear on expectations for assignments.

She's so specific when grading, but doesn't give the class guidance aka "where was _____ mentioned?!?" You can follow the prompt for assignments and still get points off for it "being too short" even though the page limit has been met, and we have been directed to not go over that limit. Overall confusion.

I feel sorry for foreign students, because that can be confusing as well as misleading. This class is not worth the stress it caused me and my classmates. Avoid.

Although I personally did not have any direct communication with the professor, a number of my peers struggled with her attitude when talking to her out of the lecture setting. Her assignments are more tedious than they are difficult but with no clear grading rubric can be a little stressful.
Overall, it's not hard and I did finish with a resume and LinkedIn profile of a much higher quality than I would have if I didn't do them for a grade, however, if you are looking for a really engaging class then this isn't it.

Such an easy class. The only downside is the 3 hour lecture once a week, but besides that the class is so easy. Loyd is very preppy and brings in guest lecutrers' to talk about there own jobs. Assignments are a few pages, weekly, and about yourself. She takes attendance so you HAVE to go but I used the whole class as a study period to finish all my assignments.

This class is very tedious and unengaging. I went into this course attentive and wanting to learn and participate, however by the end I found myself watching TikToks and scrolling through my phone instead. You do not really learn about careers specific to anthropology, but rather listen to guest lecturers who have at the bare minimum taken an anthropology course in the past and how they try to rudimentarily connect what they have learned with their current careers. These careers include some interesting ones such as UX researchers to some not so interesting ones, to me at least, including accountants and make-up artists.

The assignments feel like busy work, such as taking personality tests and writing on what you found out about yourself, however the grading is very harsh, which seems odd considering you are writing about your subjective experience.

Finally the most frustrating part is how much she stresses having a perfect resume, when her resume and the sample resumes provided do not meet up to her own standards. We had to upload are resumes to VMOCK and achieve a score of 80/100 or higher. However, I uploaded hers and the sample resumes and their scores did not even get close to 80/100.

However, maybe I am just salty considering my resume got marked down despite my VMOCK score being considerably higher than hers. Overall this course and the grading just seem arbitrary.